Sweeney has strong words for Christie

Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget.

He woke up Friday morning even angrier.

“This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he said in an interview Friday.

“I wanted to punch him in his head.”

Sweeney had just risked his political neck to support the governor’s pension and health reform, and his reward was a slap across the face. The governor’s budget was a brusque rejection of every Democratic move, and Sweeney couldn’t even get an audience with the governor to discuss it.

“You know who he reminds me of?” Sweeney says. “Mr. Potter from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the mean old bastard who screws everybody.”

This is not your regular budget dispute. This is personal. And it could have seismic impact on state politics.

Because the working alliance between these two men is the central political fact in New Jersey these days. If that changes, this brief and productive era of bipartisan cooperation is over.

“Last night I couldn’t calm down,” Sweeney said. “To prove a point to me – a guy who has stood side by side with him, and made tough decisions – for him to punish people to prove his political point? He’s just a rotten bastard to do what he did.”

It is a law of nature that Democrats and Republicans fight over budgets, like dogs chasing cats. And both parties are playing to their ideological scripts in this dispute.But Sweeney’s beef with the governor goes much deeper. He feels the governor has acted in bad faith.

The governor’s budget, he says, is full of vindictive cuts designed to punish Democrats, and anyone else who dared to defy him. And he is furious that the governor refused to talk to him during the final week.

“After all the heavy lifting that’s been done – the property tax cap, the interest arbitration reform, the pension and health care reform – and the guy wouldn’t even talk to me?” Sweeney asks.

The details are even uglier. The governor, Sweeney said, personally told him they would talk. His staff called Sweeney and asked him to remain close all day Wednesday. At one point, the staff told him the governor planned to call in five minutes.

No call.

No negotiations.

“I sat in my office all day like a nitwit, figuring we were going to talk,” Sweeney says. As for the vindictive cuts, Sweeney’s list of suspects is a long one.

The governor cut the Senate and Assembly budgets, but not his own, a move that is unprecedented. He cut money from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, the outfit that sided with Democrats on this year’s revenue estimates.

He cut a fellowship program run by Alan Rosenthal, the Rutgers University professor who served as referee in this year’s legislative redistricting fight, and sided with Democrats.When Democrats tried to restore money to a few favorite programs – including college scholarships for poor students, and legal aid for the needy – the governor not only rejected the additions, he added new cuts on top of that.

He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons, including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services.But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.

“Listen, you can punch me in the face and knock me down, do what you want,” Sweeney says. “But don’t be vindictive and punish innocent people. These people didn’t do anything to him. It’s like a bank robber taking hostages. And now he’s starting to shoot people.

“I liken it to being spoiled. He was angry because he wanted a mutual budget. But do you hurt people because of that? Do you take $8 million in AIDS funding away? Legal services is drowning as it is, and you take away another $5 million? I’m just so angry that he hurt people like this to prove a point. He is a cruel man.”

The governor refused to discuss this, as did his chief of staff, Richard Bagger, and his treasurer, Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff. Republican legislative leaders, who have been reduced to impotent Bobbleheads in the Christie era, say only that they agree with the governor, whatever he says.

This tiff began when Democrats decided to draft their own budget, as an alternative to the governor’s and a means of contrasting their priorities with his.

The governor’s office wanted to negotiate a single budget instead. But they would not discuss it until an agreement was reached on pension and health reform, according to Sweeney and the chairmen of the budget committees in the Assembly and Senate. In the end, the reform wasn’t signed until Tuesday, just two days before the budget was due.So Christie took the Democratic plan, and pruned it with his line-item veto, without talking to Sweeney. When Democrats saw it, they considered it a declaration of war. It gave no ground to their priorities, and it came with a condescending lecture.

“He’s mean-spirited,” Sweeney said in the Friday interview. “He’s angry. If you don’t do what he says, I liken it to being spoiled, I’m going to get my way, or else.”And: “He’s a rotten prick.”

The truth is that in New Jersey, the governor has all the power in a budget fight. He simply vetoes any budget line he doesn’t like, and it disappears.

The bigger political question is whether Sweeney and Christie will ever find common ground again on big issues. Education reform is next, though it’s likely to wait until after the November elections.

That leaves time to cool off. But Sweeney may benefit from a continuing fight. The party’s liberal base is furious at him over pension and health reform. And unless he regains their trust, he’s not likely to win the party’s nomination for governor or U.S. Senate, as he hopes.

For now, Sweeney will have to content himself with making Republicans pay some price for this budget. He plans to schedule override votes on these line-item vetoes.

The Republican Bobbleheads will side with the governor again, and the vetoes will stand. But individual legislators will have to go on record supporting each of these ugly cuts.Yes, this will be all theater. And yes, it will be all partisan. Sadly, it seems Trenton is reverting to form.